I have been building companies online for 7 years now (kind of crazy to think about) and in those 7 years I have sold two companies (Closify and Payd) and I’ve distilled what I’ve done into a repeatable playbook

and in this potentially long email, I will be sharing this playbook and turbo writing this off of my 3rd americano so excuse the inevitable grammatical errors

let’s dive in:

Finding Winning Ideas

When I was starting my first real company, Closify, my partner told me that I was lucky I figured out the hard part

and I was confused, because we weren’t really making money yet, but he said “the hardest part of getting rich is figuring out HOW you will get rich, many people waste years if not decades trying to find their how”

and his point was, we had insane demand for Closify from the jump, it was evident the product market fit was insane, people were BEGGING to use our solution and telling their friends about it (extreme signs of PMF)

and so even though it wasn’t making much money (yet) he said you know your “how” and now you just need to not screw it up (no pressure right hahah)

but the better part about figuring out the “How” is once you do, it’s actually kind of hard to screw it up when people want your product so badly

your outreach could not even be that good, but it works because you’re selling a cool glass of water in the desert

The same thing happened with Payd, it was one of the first solutions that enabled fully performance only UGC for tech companies and apps

they were EXHAUSTED from being quoted insane rates upfront from “influencers” so when I said “hey, I have hundreds/thousands of micro creators ready to post for $1-2 per 1,000 views”

they were like “WHERE DO I SEND THE MONEY” and we had incredible PMF and hit a 6 figure run rate in the first real month of launch

so what I’m getting at, is the most important part is your HOW, or your idea, so all of this and now you are probably okay pal, now how do I get these ideas I am not a giga brain genius like yourself

WRONG! I am not some genius and I even believe someone with the room temp IQ of my brothers dog can do this

so here’s the kicker:

I do not build ideas, I copy demand.

For Closify, there was MASSIVE demand to hire sales reps, I knew because I was a sales rep and ran a sales agency, and they all said they had troubles hiring sales reps

then I find out Cole Gordon is doing $30m/yr with his sales recruiting business, then I find out CommissionCrowd is doing millions a year with their platform

and when you find many people making a boatload of money in an industry, THAT IS A GOOD THING

“but but but doesn’t that mean it’s saturated”

NO!

It means you can actually make some coin with that idea and I promise you it’s better than your “original” idea you told your boys about over drinks that was going to retire the friend group

we’ve all been there, it’s not a good idea.

Now you may be like “Okay Einstein, now you’ve told me to copy products already in demand, so helpful, but how do I decide on what to actually build”

Don’t worry — since I am assuming we’re sharing my brothers dog’s 3 brain cells, we won’t be doing any thinking ourselves

to an extent, I got lucky with Closify and Payd of I was just in those industries, but now we have….. artificial intelligence!

I would start a new project on claude (important to note a project and not just a new chat) and use whispr flow to talk and give it ALL of your context

what have you been doing last 3 years, you probably have some edge you don’t know about but context is important for your idea (some people that are wizards at sales should rip B2B, others that have a gift for content and algorithms should go B2C)

and you’re basically going to tell Claude

“Hey Claude, I am looking to start a software company and here is my criteria for what I want to build

1. I want to build something that is in a rapidly growing industry, there should be multiple competitors in this space all making millions of dollars per year

2. The idea should be solving an extremely painful problem, to where if I took this product away from my customers, they’d be extremely upset

3. this idea should make business owners a lot more money “

Okay and you’re going to go back and fourth with Claude a lot, it is going to give you good ideas, and you should always ask claude to ask additional questions for context before answering

Once you find some ideas, this is where we carve out our own blue ocean inside of a red ocean

The sales rep recruitment space was a red ocean, everyone was selling placement fees for sales reps

the niche hiring platform to hire commission only sales reps only for online businesses was a blue ocean for me

The UGC agency / hiring UGC creators was and is a massive red ocean

a platform that allows companies to deposit a budget and only pay a cost per 1,000 views for content was a massive blue ocean 

so we take the competition of these ideas we found, and either we do this (or again as ai) to go look up their G2 reviews and find the recurring complaints we can find

maybe people kept complaining “this product is pretty solid, but I really wish it integrated with Hubspot”

well now this is going to blow your mind….

if you build it, and integrate YOUR product with Hubspot, you can now reach out to all of those people complaining, and say “Hey there, I’m Alex and I am a solo builder, and I saw your complaint about {product} and so I went ahead and built one with a Hubspot integration for you, here’s a free month trial to give me feedback and help me make this the best product ever)

AND BOOM THAT IS HOW YOU GET YOUR FIRST USERS

You’re telling me….. If i build a product that’s in demand, and then figure out what people don’t like about the competition, and then I build what’s missing for them, and reach out and tell them…. that’s how I get my first users??

Yes.

Then how you really win, is staying SO close to your customers, and never letting yourself get “too big” to where you stop listening to your users and being extremely close to them

and you also win by doing things that do not scale, you need to do things that make people go “holy $hit what’s wrong with this guy”

you need to find a prospects address and send them a brick and say “let’s build together”

you need to send hand written thank you notes to your users (you can actually automate this)

you need to ship at lightning speed to when your users ask for a new feature you lock yourself in your room with a white monster energy drink and blast binaural beats until it’s done

you can build in highly competitive, in demand spaces, and just WIN.

because the bar is so damn low

I cannot tell you how many people run a 7 figure business that are the most unimpressive people I know

you can come in and just take their lunch money if you’re a DAWG

maybe I am starting to rant….. my heart is going at light speed after all these americano’s

let me leave you with a summary

this TRULY isn’t rocket science, the playbook is build something with INSANE demand, find your edge, reach out to the people you built for, and then be a DAWG and have an amazing go to market strategy and do things that don’t scale (to start) and you will get to 10k MRR and beyond

It’s not complicated, these markets aren’t saturated, sure the job market sucks, sure maybe there’s weird political stuff / going on

but it is the EASIEST it’s ever been with AI

YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS.

If you’re a dawg and you want my team to build your idea and you want me to show you how to sling deals like Prime Jordan Belfort

click here to apply to work with me and my team

Have an INCREDIBLE weekend

Alex